The Confrontation
by firstForward
Summary: Even after the final Shadow Game was won by Atem, one spirit managed to hang onto its host. And Ryou has no choice but to fight it off alone.


The Confrontation

It was a series of quiet ticks that startled him out of unconsciousness. Which was rather strange, really, that something so immaterial and ordinary could bring him back into the clarity of reality. Breathing so slowly and evenly that he almost was unsure that he was breathing at all, Ryou Bakura forced open his heavy eyelids and was met with the vision of his wristwatch, ticking in a smooth, unending rhythm next to his ear. The plastic strap was clinched too tightly, he now thought idly, taking in the dim vision of the imprint of the watchstrap on his skin. Drearily, he let his eyelids slide shut once again, and his mind lost what little thought processes had been occurring within an instant.

Exhaustion was something that came so naturally to him, as after all, he had once been host to a spirit that had found no end to uses for his body, generally at the expense of sleep among other things. Now as he drifted, Ryou was quite sure that he was feeling the similar need to rest that went along with having gone days without sleep. He had not in fact been missing out on any sleep recently, which made his exhaustion a bit odd. This was, as it turned out, the first of several warning signals that he would fail to recognize, for Ryou was one of the sort of people who generally denied that there was anything wrong with themselves until someone else pointed it out to them.

Hours dripped by like a leaking facet, unnoticed by the occupant of the apartment, sleeping dreamlessly on the bed. He awoke just as the sun turned midday into early afternoon, convinced that it was morning, only to be informed rather bluntly by his wristwatch that he had indeed slept half the day away. Sitting up with a jerk, Ryou yawned and scowled, determined not to waste anymore time in bed. He left for the shower, nearly tripping over his bedcovers, which had been starting to pool on the floor.

Once showered and dressed, Ryou pulled open the fridge door and was made aware of how starving he was by his stomach, which he attributed to the fact that he'd missed breakfast. Eggs were removed from a carton with another yawn. He set a pot of water on the stove to boil, and while waiting for the water he wandered over to the phone. A red number on the tiny screen of the answering machine told him that he had one new message, so Ryou tapped a button to listen.

A rushed voice from a neighbour went on to ask, in a faint out-of-breath tone, if he could use the spare key that had been given to him to make sure that his favourite TV show was being recorded. Letting out a half groan, Ryou glanced at his watch and realized that the show was already running, and that his neighbour would only be missing a few minutes if he started the recording now. Glancing distractedly at the oven, he decided it would be fine for a minute, and pulled open a drawer to grab a key ring before shuffling out of the kitchen. The front door was pulled open with a huff, and without even bothering to pull on some shoes he hurried outside and wandered a few doors down to open a different apartment door.

The living space was situated a bit differently than his, making him walk down the wrong hall for a second, and the remote controls were somewhat confusing with far more buttons that he was used to, but he eventually worked out what to do. He hit the power button and watched the TV flicker to life, and winced severely as a high-pitched ringing vibrated in his eardrums. His head ached, all of a sudden, and Ryou quickly set the recording and got out of the room, with his hands over his ears as he went.

Back in his apartment, filling his mouth full with food, the headache had not even remotely lessened. There was something else that was bothering him, too, which he supposed was just part of the headache. Every thought that entered his mind felt incredibly loud, and he turned on the radio in the living room in an attempt to drown out the echoes reverberating through his aching head. The feeling only intensified as he breathed in the smells from the hot food on his plate, and it confused him to find that when he stood to place the dishes in the sink, for a brief moment he had felt dizzy.

These things were dismissed as nothing, and he settled down into a chair and wondered what he could do for the rest of the day. The shelf that the small TV was sitting on caught his eye, and he hummed softly under his breath as he dropped down onto the floor and ran a finger over his movie collection.

The collection contained mostly action, fantasy, horror and thriller movies. The horror and thriller genres were something he had only recently gotten into, which, if Ryou had put any deep thought into it, he would have decided that it was due to his former possessor's influence. Fear as a form of exhilaration was suddenly an attractive concept, which was not how he used to think. Selecting a lighter action movie and placing it into the player, he vaguely wondered if he wasn't going to nod off if he curled up on the cushions. Turning off the radio with a press of a button, he decided he might as well make popcorn. Perhaps the salt and butter would keep him awake.

His cushions, Ryou wearily concluded, after finding himself more horizontal than vertical, were rather too comfortable for his own good. He didn't even recall watching the characters on the screen take the necessary actions to arrive at the particular location they were at now, and as he watched their blurred shapes chatter away about which path to take he found himself distracted by his tiredness. The headache (which was not really a headache, he had told himself) was now more of a dull throbbing, a background noise to the ringing that was in his ears once more. Ryou's eyes closed.

Darkness rolled in.

xXx

There was a quiet ticking. Feeling a little exasperated more than anything, Ryou opened his eyes and glanced at his wristwatch, frowning a little to see that the second hand appeared to have stopped. It shuddered as though it was trying to move, letting out faint ticks, though the time it told did not change in the slightest. The clock still read the same time that he had probably fallen asleep at watching that movie, and Ryou guessed that the battery just needed changing. He rubbed his eyes and sat up.

He was in his bedroom. His frown deepened, and he backtracked on his thoughts and tried to remember leaving the living room. Perhaps he'd turned off his TV and had just given up on doing anything but sleeping for the rest of the day. It certainly seemed plausible.

There was a plush rug next to his bed, he noticed suddenly, a rug that was deeply familiar to him as something that he'd once had, in an old home of his when he'd still lived with his family. It was something that had been sold a long time ago, along with many other things, and his brow wrinkled in confusion as he dropped his feet down and felt the softness tickle his skin. His gaze lifted from the floor and he glanced about the room, noticing a big wardrobe that he certainly didn't remember keeping when he'd moved, along with a shelf littered with RPG books. He swallowed thickly, the butter of the popcorn still a taste lingering on his tongue.

The books were something that belonged with the Monster World game, something that, along with the game, had been packed away in the back corner of a closet, ever since the spirit had been purged from his body. As the throbbing sensation kicked in again, reminding Ryou of his aching head, he stood up with a start and came to the horrifying realization of what had happened to him. Somehow, in falling asleep while watching the movie, he'd slid further back into his subconsciousness than he'd been in a long time. A place such as this, was something he didn't even know he could access without being sucked into it forcibly by something (namely the spirit, but he refused to think about him).

Trying to calm his now shaking breath, Ryou turned around and got a good look at the door to the hallway that he knew existed but that he'd never seen, as he'd never been able to leave his room before. But there was no reason he shouldn't be able to leave now, as after all there was nothing that could lock the door, and sooner or later his body would need a mind to control it once more. Maybe if it got hungry enough he'd be sucked right back out of the inside of his head and into consciousness. It was a dim hope, but it was there.

His mind room was something he'd been trying to forget, and it made him mildly pleased to know that he hadn't immediately recognized the place when he'd first entered it. The more bad memories that he could erase, the better. However, this was reversing all the work he'd put into relearning how to think good thoughts. It was bringing back the old feelings of untethered anxiety and stress, and as he strode barefoot towards the door, trying to ignore the what seemed like real wood underneath his feet, Ryou forced himself to breathe evenly to keep his heart rate down.

Although it was a rather plain wooden door with a simple brass handle, it was rather intimidating to him, but Ryou grasped it without hesitation and twisted hard, praying it led to an exit out of his own head. Surely the hallway of his mind led somewhere.

Stiff, untouched stillness awaited him beyond. Silence that had not been broken in quite a long time, now grasped at his ears, and Ryou bit his tongue to try and keep quiet, though it seemed rather pointless. He was inside his own head. Why should it matter, if he was quiet or not? The logic escaped him however, and Ryou moved out of his room with some trepidation, testing the dark floor of the hallway with one foot before moving forward. It was cold.

The hall was much shorter than he had anticipated, ending in sharp corners as though he were inside a tapered rectangular prism rather than a hall. Ryou started shaking as he felt something oozing around his toes, and he looked down to see a thin, wriggling black cloud, all too solid for his liking. He shook his foot abruptly, trying to dislodge the questing substance, and stumbled a few feet backwards. His back hit something.

It was altogether too soft to be a wall, and too hard to be something cushiony. Ryou tried to swallow, but unfortunately his tongue was stuck in his throat. He tried to think, but his thoughts had come to a stumbling halt. Taking a step forward and then bracing himself, very slowly, Ryou turned on his heel.

He was staring at himself.

A blue and white striped shirt rested on his other self, with the left arm poorly bandaged, and peppered with red specks that appeared to be blood, but it was too dark to tell. He was wearing blue jeans and a black trench coat, a coat Ryou himself rather avoided because it had been a gift and it was never his style anyway. The arms were crossed over his chest, and a murky thought crossed his mind that the image that he was looking at was flawed. This image was shorter than he was now, and rather...younger, in appearance...

The eyes were glaring reflections of a thousand lost thoughts, like fire on the desert sand, like glittering amethysts, almost brown but not quite.

"You..." Ryou whispered, but he could not speak any further, because at this point he realized he wasn't breathing. Air was sucked into his lungs hurriedly. It bothered him that in a place where he should not need to breathe, his mind was still convinced that air was necessary.

With features as still as a statue's, his past image stared unblinkingly at him and spoke, and his voice was like the thrumming of large drums, deep and bold. "The Pharaoh lied to you, you know," said the image.

Opening and closing his mouth several times without managing to get any words out, Ryou just looked startled and upset. The beginnings of real emotion were just starting to get past the disbelief in his thoughts, and the image watched Ryou's eyes glass over. His shoulders were tensing, too, which was more or less universal body language for someone bracing themself or for someone about to bolt.

"Yuugi lied to you. And your friends. They told you that they'd gotten rid of me. That I was gone for good." Continued the image in a dark tone, and its sound was like doors banging shut on an empty room.

"You," Ryou murmured again, in a voice more level than before. The muscles in his neck were taunt, and he spoke as though it was difficult to form sentences. "But you were. You were gone," he said helplessly.

Shaking his head very briefly, with mouth cracking open slightly in a decidedly cruel smirk, he said, "Don't be foolish. Don't be so naïve." He took a step forward, and Ryou matched it by taking one back. The once perfectly expressionless image had hard eyes now, still focussed on Ryou with all the weight of an anvil. His smirk widened a little as Ryou abruptly took another step backward. "You should know me better than that. I'm not so _weak_. No chosen king will uproot me from my goals."

Something was terribly wrong with him, Ryou noticed, something that rather struck a chord in him. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, though, and his mind was occupied with trying to figure out a way to escape. "You were defeated," Ryou tried, still thinking that it was just not possible that the spirit who'd once possessed him was still actually possessing him, "the Pharaoh won the final Shadow Game, you should have passed away!"

The image didn't move any closer, to his wonderment. Instead, he looked a bit thoughtful, and amused, still wearing that ugly smirk. Tapping his cheek with his forefinger, the image spoke a bit more slowly, as though he was enjoying the conversation. "So we were," he admitted, and drawled out, taking his time to reveal his thoughts, "the Thief King proved useful, but even he could not hold out against the ancient gods. His soul has been taken, so no longer can I be contained within it. And I refused to be dragged into nonexistence."

It was an ivory colour, Ryou speculated, far too white to be his skin, and even in the dark he could tell that the face had odd angles. The features were more Egyptian than Japanese, and he started as he realized what had been bothering him. His former possessor should have been able to take on his form flawlessly. This image looked like someone had tried to make a costume out of him without actually having met him. The words that the image had spoken flowed like a drug through his ears.

"_You should know me better than that."_

"_His soul has been taken..."_

"He did die," Ryou said miserably.

Observing the reincarnation of the thief it'd once made a pact with, with lips parting to bare teeth too sharp to be human, the image said, "Indeed. But he still lives on, in you, you see. You are him, in a way. And because of this, I am bound to your soul just as much as I am bound to his. So when he was taken to the Afterlife, I chose a new host." A slim, delicate hand raised, and one finger pointed at Ryou. The nails were too long. They looked like claws. "You."

Zorc survived, Ryou thought in horror, and I don't have Yuugi or the Other Yuugi here to save me.

Running a long pink tongue over its incisors, Zorc continued, "I will not be so lenient with you as the Thief King was. Your survival is not necessary for mine. Though this body will take some getting used to, I imagine it will not be long before I can derive a way to obtain my true body back. And so, for now at least, I will be Ryou Bakura. All that's left to do is..." Ryou was now sliding backward a few feet, thoughts absolutely scrambled, no longer able to consider anything but how completely terrified he was. "Clean out the remaining occupant of the body," Zorc finished.

Feet moving before he'd commanded them to, Ryou dashed into his mind room, and slammed the door behind him with a kick. His back pushed against it, mourning the lack of a lock, but he spread his feet to brace for an impact. In the hallway a dark growl resounded. The black shadow substance that had been in the hall tried to slink under the door, and it occurred to Ryou that it had been Zorc's influence on the hall that had caused it to act less like a hall and more like a living thing. This is my mind, Ryou thought desperately, I should have the upper hand!

"You're feeble," came Zorc's voice, and it no longer even remotely sounded like it had belonged to the Thief King. Ryou's breath came out in spurts. "You can't do a thing against me," came the thunderous voice, and Ryou shook right down to his feet. It was so _loud_. Why wouldn't his ears stop ringing?

His eyes darted about the room, looking for anything that would be passable as a weapon. But his room was filled with comforting toys, art tools and books, and for a second Ryou wondered how his past self had maintained his existence, when his soul had been bound to a demon's.

_A large metal door, shut at all times. The Eye of Wdjat, embossed in the centre. Dark stains the colour of rust splattered against the frame._

Head aching as the demon in the hall stalked closer, seconds away from him, Ryou drove away the fantasy image from his mind. After all, how would he know what his other self's mind room door looked like?

The door did not merely shudder behind him, as Zorc banged into it. It splintered, and Ryou was flung to the other side of the room, landing on his side as his head hit the wall and caused his vision to dance frustratingly. But Ryou was in survival mode, and he got to his feet before he could even come to the conclusion that he needed to get up off of the floor, and his eyes stung as he watched Zorc in its flawed form push open the door the rest of the way. The too-pale skin was starting to look too tight on its bony frame, and as the demon rolled its shoulders back the skin split open like a banana peel, and a black shoulder peeked out from underneath, covered in imagined human blood. Ryou felt his stomach flip.

"This is my body," he cried out, "I won't let you have it."

Pain, spiking through his mind. Intruder, came the thought, but Ryou was too tired to make any sense of it. You can't come in, he thought to himself, even Voice didn't enter my mind room. You're intruding. _Intruder_, echoed his mind.

Hurling the first thing at Zorc that his hands came across, he winced, not as the glass of the flower vase shattered against the door, but as Zorc ducked and the human spine broke. The long spine of the demon split through muscle sinew and shed the discs that had belonged to the human spine on the floor. The trench coat tore across, giving him a good view of blood dripping down and soaking the shirt and coat. It dripped onto the hardwood. Ryou thought, dismally and absently, I've seen worse in horror movies.

Zorc launched itself forward. Bounding over the bed, Ryou hurled the next thing he came across, the bedside lamp, though it was larger and so required both hands. The slow throw was easily avoided by his adversary. "This is my mind room!" Ryou shouted, "and my mind! Get out!" His heart had never beat so fast in his life.

Voice wouldn't have let Zorc trample through his mind, Ryou thought in irritation and panic, he knew how to hold him back. So how...

It moved so fast, stepping up lightly onto the bed, fingers flexing as if readying to swipe at him, and Ryou heard bones crack. The bed frame could not actually take its weight, and snapped in several places, dropping the mattresses on the floor along with the now mere broken wood. Demon teeth snapped against each other, and eyes that held no semblance of the brown colour that belonged to Ryou's genetics took in his shaking form with all the interest of a hungry cat.

I wish the bed would just swallow him up, Ryou thought without meaning to.

Preparing to pounce on him, Zorc was left stunned as the top mattress abruptly folded in on it, with even the box mattress underneath bending in an effort to bury the creature in cushioned comfort. Even as scared stiff as he was, Ryou saw the action for what it was: his mind room was responding to him.

The light overhead came down on top of the mattress, shattering the light bulbs and short-circuiting the wires, starting a dim spark of a fire. The wardrobe lifted up off of the floor a second later, landing on top of that, and Ryou looked around again, panting. He needed more things to bury the demon with.

A sickening slurping sound, and the cracking of several dozen more bones, caused Ryou to turn around again. The mess of things jerked up as Zorc straightened, and the wardrobe slid with a clunk to the floor. Stepping away from the bed, the demon paused to stare at its reflection in Ryou's full length mirror; grasping a section of skin, the demon finally tore off the rest of the image.

His ceiling was broken.

That was the only thought that entered Ryou's mind, as he stared upwards, high above him, where the creature's head was. It had suddenly grown to its full height the moment the last of the imagined body had been torn away (the pieces of which were still on his floor, and Ryou refused to look) and had broken through his ceiling, the clawed feet so large that only one could fit in his room.

I need to get more creative, Ryou thought with a swallow, I can't just childishly throw things at it and hope it goes away. I need to get...

_Dangerous._

Zorc lifted one foot and moved to crush him with it. Ryou took hold of every ounce of strength and willpower he had and stamped both feet against the floor. "Open up!" He screamed.

He dropped. Down, down, into darkness, and the hole above him sealed up, like it had never existed at all.

xXx

It had taken him a while to finally come to grips with the situation. No matter how hard he tried to think himself out of his own head, nothing worked. Pain throbbed through his skull, sometimes in waves, sometimes in spurts, and Ryou knew Zorc was trying to work out where he was. And he was so incredibly exhausted. He didn't know how the thief had done it, holding onto such a heavy thing. The demon in his head was too much for him to carry, and he had to pinch himself several times as he thought, trying to stay awake. One slip-up and that would be the end of him. Sitting alone in utter blackness (how deep into his subconscious was he, really?) Ryou tried to come up with a plan to rid himself of the creature, since he could not get help.

Every horror movie he had ever seen provided a basis for the construction of weapons to defend himself. Though this was no teenage killer with a switchblade that he was facing, nor an immortal vampire with a revolver, Ryou felt that guns and blades were a start, at least. It was severely discomfiting, looking at the sharp and shiny metal beside him on the floor. He did not know how to handle them. But Ryou was running out of energy to fight with, so he forced himself to go through with it.

Carefully, uncertainly, Ryou began imagining (this was a very risky thing to do in a place where your imaginations formed just as you'd asked them to) a field for them to fight on. He knew the rampant new creation of the field, much larger and more noticeable than the weapons, would attract the attention of the demon.

Silently thanking the softness of the grass and dirt underneath his feet, Ryou looked about at the new football field that had come into existence. Large overhead lights strung on the ceiling provided him with a good view of its entire length, along with a view beyond into the blackness of nothingness. Bleachers ran along its sides, tall enough, Ryou found out rather instantly, to reach Zorc's knees.

Coming into the space so quickly and without warning allowed Zorc some time for it to take in the image of the field with Ryou standing on a ten-yard line. It then let out a cold snarl and advanced forward. The bleachers buckled forward as the force of the demon smashing its way through them almost completely crumpled the metal. Ryou drew a gun, but he was horribly shut down as Zorc's second head opened its maw, breathing out.

A tongue of fire shot down towards him. Ryou dropped all thoughts that guns and knives would be effective against the monster in his head. He dived sideways, and recreated his football field, imagining a huge hill in the path of the fire. At the same time he demanded that the ground become a hole, and dropped several feet down. Above him, the intense heat melted his hill and made a crater of the ground. A wave of smoke, ash and sparks washed over him, and Ryou coughed as his lungs struggled to find clean air.

His made-up weapons had disappeared with his despair that they were useless, and now he struggled to figure out what to do. What scares a demon, thought Ryou. Another demon?

An image of the Millennium Ring, lying so passively against his chest, entered his thoughts for a second. Ryou's heart must have skipped a beat because he felt a momentary relief from his arteries and veins throbbing, only to have the sensation come back in full force a second later. "I can't be like me and defeat him," he whispered to himself, as the ground shook to the core of its creation, and his mind ached along with it. Zorc was still advancing. "But maybe," Ryou ground out, "maybe I can be like the spirit of the Ring..."

A duel disk fastened itself onto his arm, deck already in place in the deck slot of the machine. The screen lay blank, not displaying any life points, and indeed the system did not even light up or thrum from fans whirring inside the disk. It was not there to make holograms, as Ryou did not need it for that purpose. It was there to hold his cards.

Hands fisting in the dirt and grass to pull himself out of the hole he'd made for himself, Ryou stood his ground as he stared up at the demon, who was only a single large step away from squashing him like an insignificant insect. "Draw!" Ryou cried out. Zorc began to make a sound, like guttural laugh, only it was far too reptilian a sound to make any sense out of it. "Man-Eater Bug! White Magical Hat! Attack Zorc Necrophades!"

The monsters flashed into life as he placed them on monster spaces, tiny creatures compared to the enemy they faced. His Bug scrabbled forward, lightning fast, and leaped up onto the shin of the demon, stabbing and gnashing with its claws and teeth. Waving a wand, his magician let loose a blast of magic, which washed over Zorc with all the effectiveness of a warm breeze. It shook its foot and Man-Eater Bug dropped off with a hiss, and Ryou cried out in fear. Even his favourite monsters were little more than nuisances to it. They disappeared with another flash, useless to him. Zorc blasted more fire at him, but Ryou was not even willing to stay in the same area anymore. He imagined a door and pulled it open with a muted cry, rushing through and pulling it shut behind him.

Oak dripped onto the black pretend floor, easily melted from the blast of fire on the other side of it. He watched it puddle on the floor, gasping as he tried to reclaim the breath he'd lost from running from certain death.

Rubbing his arms to try and shake off the sudden cold creeping through his bones, Ryou marvelled at how dry his eyes were. Surely he should have broken down by now. Surely he should have given up by now. He didn't know how he was still standing so tall, hand still clenching duel cards in case he had sudden need to defend himself. But he was in another dark portion of his mind, completely hidden from sight, so there was time yet for rest and recovery.

"I need a new plan," Ryou told himself firmly. He'd only just been given a new chance at life by his friends, a new chance at living all alone in his body, free to make his own decisions. He'd only just started to stop worrying about hurting other people. All of the time he'd spent putting back up all of the mirrors in his home. All of the time he'd spent catching up on the homework he'd missed. "I won't let the time I spent putting my life back together go to waste," he mumbled softly. I can't. Not after Yuugi promised we'd always be friends...I've never even had a friend that's lasted as long as Yuugi and the others have...

His duel cards nearly bent from the strength with which he was holding them, and Ryou breathed out a long breath, determined to ignore the fuzzy spots in his vision.

Oh, how his head _ached_...

Steeling himself, Ryou began to imagine a different field, something with more space to hide. Domino High School seemed like a good solution. But as he started to picture it, something broke through his thoughts, like the slightest brushing of a feather against his skin. Ryou started, and turned around, almost wondering if there was something in the blackness that could have touched him. But there was nothing but the comforting night velvet of his mind, enveloping and protecting him.

Ryou started to shiver. Not from the cold, no, but because he could almost see a thin sliver of silver, gliding through the darkness before winking out again. Help, he thought to himself, walls, barricades, anything!

There was a growl. Wasting no time on considering how Zorc had found him in the depths of his head, Ryou encased himself in shadows and dove in deeper into his mind.

The growling beast followed him, and it bothered him to not feel the floor jerk like an earthquake had hit it, and he wondered how the demon had gotten so quiet. Ryou ran as fast as his aching mind could imagine himself running, but then an appendage whipped out and knocked him to the ground. He tried to gather his feet under him before the creature was upon him, but as he felt a heavy form settle right next to him, he realized it was too late. Ryou froze.

A lower sound, more of a muffled huff of air than a growl, filtered through his ears, and Ryou rolled over. Perplexed as to why he wasn't dead yet (would he join his sister in Heaven or the Ring spirit in his Afterlife, he wondered) Ryou turned his gaze and was met with the most astonishing sight. There curled in a relaxed posture was a creature he'd only heard about from the stories from his friends, head cocked to stare down at him in a manner seemingly confused.

Diabound, all silver scales, lower body that of a snake, and upper body that of a man with wings. "No," Ryou cried out, now thoroughly devastated, "you're supposed to be gone along with the spirit! Why are you still here?" He crawled backwards, and a miserable sound left his throat. More things in his head, when he thought he had been the only one left.

Snake half flicking out a tongue, tasting the air of his fear and general upset, Diabound shifted and suddenly shrunk, and Ryou forced himself to his feet. He refused to stay in one spot while the creature prepared to do whatever awful thing it was about to do. The half-formed image of his school slid back into his mind, and he flung it out, watching it form into existence with all the ease of a press-on tattoo.

Ryou regretted not removing the pavement from his vision of the place, not enjoying the feeling of running barefoot over something so hard. The space behind the school wavered as the demon in his head narrowed down on his location and moved closer. Pounding down the walkway, Ryou slowed down at the front entrance and pulled open a door. There was a room for removing outdoor shoes and putting on indoor ones, and for a second Ryou considered stopping to help himself to his shoes, before pushing aside the thought from his head. He needed to keep moving.

Perhaps the only reason he wasn't dead yet was because Zorc was unable to unleash its full strength in a mind that did not belong to it. The demon was limited by what Ryou believed it could do, just as much as Ryou's limited imagination placed restrictions on his own power. This was something Ryou himself only partially comprehended, so he had accepted the theory that made better sense to him, which was that Zorc simply was not as strong mentally as it was physically. Outside of a mind, on a real battlefield, the demon would have won rather instantly, but because they were fighting in his subconscious different strengths were needed. Muscle power was useless here when neither had real bodies. Instead, metal quickness, willpower, and stubbornness were important.

I have withstood the Ring spirit trying to break me down by hurting things I care about, Ryou thought. I have stayed hopeful throughout all of the horrible things that he has done in my body. So I can be stronger than Zorc, I have more determination, I have more reasons to fight harder than that demon does!

There are too many things that I want to do with my life, for me to give up now!

A rumbling was shaking the foundations of the school. Ryou stumbled but managed to catch himself before he fell, grabbing the sill of a window. Zorc roared outside, but Ryou was not convinced that it was the most frightening sound that he'd ever heard. Because he knew the sounds that the god monsters could make; those were truly terrifying.

Something hissed nearby, distracting him from the roaring. His head twisted, and he stared at the large silver-white snake slithering down the hall. Pieces of glass littered the floor by the door; the creature had bashed its way through. Seeing it in its new form was all Ryou needed to know that it wasn't planning on hurting him. But it still made him anxious, regardless. "Go away," Ryou hissed back. You were Voice's, you don't belong here, he thought firmly.

The snake curled reflexively into a ball, as though it had heard his thoughts.

_Intruder_, echoed the school, with its polished floors and fingerprint-littered window glass. _Intruder_, said the florescent lighting, the long shelves for shoes. The walls pushed outward, the floor bucked upward, and the snake that had belonged to an ancient tomb robber writhed in pain where it was curled amongst the broken glass. Ryou's head ached with it. He rubbed his temples in an attempt to ease the pain, listening to the ringing, the roaring, the hissing, the rumbling driving his ears crazy. At long last he threw his hands up into the air. "Okay! Okay."

Everything stilled, and the snake looked cautiously up from the floor, which righted itself an instant later. The walls returned to being more straight than convex.

"You hurt the people I cared about," Ryou whispered, "you did terrible things once. But you have to help save me, or you'll stop existing too..."

As the snake slithered back around, getting larger as it left, Ryou swallowed the painful lump in his throat. It left him with a hollow ache in his heart to know that he and the thief shared the same _ka_ monster.

Diabound disappeared from sight, moving to engage the enemy as per Ryou's orders.

A sound like the great intake of breath before an intense blast of massive destruction filled his ears, and Ryou watched the black world outside light up from Diabound's stolen White Lightning strike.

xXx

The school was in ruins. Perhaps even 'ruins' was not the word to describe it. Ruins implied some sense of the original structure of the school still being there, but as it was, so much of the place had been melted by the intense heat that what remained was more dust than broken pieces.

Diabound, Ryou discovered, was rather exactly as he had imagined. Quick in the air, with strength enough to crush most creatures with a single hand, it fought without hesitation. Every hit it took bashed away at Ryou's strength, however, something he had not expected even though he had experienced it firsthand when he had tried to destroy it himself. Exhausted as he was, Ryou knew he could not take much more of it before he failed to get up again. The hits to Diabound (including punches, swipes of claws, and streams of flame) were not only wearing on his energy but on his life force as well.

He could almost feel himself slipping into oblivion.

Around him the velvet black landscape of nothing that existed as a blank page for his imagination was acting disturbingly. It grew thinner as he weakened, and all together did not seem to want to respond to his will as easily, no matter how many different things he asked for as barriers to defend himself from the demon's attacks. It occurred to him that he simply didn't have the mental strength anymore to create the things he envisioned.

Noiseless at times and extremely loud at others, the two creatures could not have been fighting for more than a few minutes, but it certainly felt like an hour to Ryou. Diabound was circling Zorc, maintaining constant attacks to keep Zorc's focus off of Ryou, who was defenceless without the buildings of the school between him and Zorc's fire. Zorc seemed quite frustrated, though it was difficult to tell if it indeed felt true emotion, and even harder to tell its emotions from its facial features. Nevertheless it swung its fists more often at the whirling fiend in the air, and flicked its tail, but its large size gave it the disadvantage of being rather slow.

The demon and Diabound were matched in a single sense, and that was their second head, which spewed fire and lightning at each other as often as possible. Ryou held onto his fear and determination in an attempt to keep his adrenaline flowing, as he would need it to stay alive. His energy kept slipping, and he thought that his vision might be blurring, but it was too dark to tell. But Diabound needed his energy, it drew off of it in order to attack, and so Ryou gave it all that he could with no reservations. Still, it was clear that the fiend was slowing up while Zorc's strikes only got more accurate.

Ryou was a strategic RPG player. He read all the books, designed his own maps, built his own terrain, and spent hours crafting character sheets. He liked playing the white mage character, whose main ability was to heal others. This made him quick to analyze battle situations, and he liked to think that he was quite good at keeping his character alive even in disadvantageous environments. Now as he struggled to remain standing while his head ached and his eyes kept slipping closed, Ryou rather thought that the head-on fight was not working out, and that he needed a new plan.

It would have scared him to the bone to consider what he was doing too deeply, so he carefully kept his mind blank as he recalled energy that was moving to fuel Diabound's attack, and watched wearily as the fiend was knocked out of the air by a backhand attack from Zorc. The hit jolted through him, and he cried out in shock from how painful it was. Zorc's second mouth opened wide, and orange-red fury licked its teeth, before shooting outward, down at him. Diabound could not move fast enough to get in its way.

Watching a stream of fire coming at him with all the impassiveness of a machine (he had no energy left to _feel_, but just enough energy to think) Ryou pointed at Zorc and demanded in a voice that was lost to the roaring of the flames for Diabound to attack, one last time.

Just once more, while it was distracted with trying to kill him, let his fiend land one final hit...

Surrendering the last of his energy, the last of his determination to survive, his desires and dreams, Ryou fed his fiend with something it was unused to. So familiar was it with hate, the need to destroy, and the thief's need for revenge, that it was unprepared for the onslaught of emotions that Ryou gave it as fuel.

His love for sweets, and the lingering hope to taste such things again. His homesickness for his old house with his entire family living in it, with the ones who had died leaving a warm mark on his heart. His wish to finally finish a year of school without transferring partway through. Wanting to play some games with his new friends. Wanting to reclaim the old ones he'd lost due to the Ring spirit. Ryou's love for life was a stronger energy than it had ever encountered, and so it gained altitude quickly and prepared one final lightning strike.

The incredible heat hit him before the fire did, seconds ahead of the flame and nearly as deadly. Ryou's mind began to shut down, and his legs finally gave out.

White Lightning released.

As his eyes slid shut, Ryou thought he imagined the red flame turn white, encasing his whole vision, lighting up the entire blackness of his mind. He could no longer feel his head aching, but he didn't even notice this. His exhaustion had finally won out over him, but Ryou managed a little, brief smile. Death didn't seem so bad, after all. And he had no regrets, since he had tried his very hardest not to lose...

He half-imagined that he could see his sister in the blinding white.

Then, nothing.

xXx

Tick, tick, tick.

It was strange, that he could hear something so quiet, and so unobtrusive, when his mind had been so battered by noises. His wristwatch ticked gently next to his ear, and Ryou cracked open one eye and imagined that he could see the second hand, moving in an unending rhythm right in front of his face. It was strange that such a noise could wake him from sleep, out of all the noises that could have done so. He yawned and let his eyelid close again.

He was feeling amazingly refreshed, like he'd just spent days sleeping on the most comfortable bed in the world. His head felt lighter than ever, and he stretched out his muscles contentedly, thinking he could do a marathon with this kind of energy. Then he stilled.

Tick, tick, tick.

Ryou slowly opened his eyes and stared at his surroundings. It was his living room, and he was curled up on some cushions on the floor, with a bowl of popcorn and a remote control by his head. He blinked both eyes and then sat up, heart suddenly pounding. The TV screen was showing the title screen of his movie, which meant that he had indeed slept through the rest of it. Ryou got a good look at his wristwatch, and was informed rather bluntly by the small object that he had indeed slept the rest of the day away. Outside, the sun was starting to set.

Letting out a sudden, heartfelt grateful cry, Ryou brushed the water from his face and ran his fingers over his head, feeling inside his mind for something that should not be there. He only got the impression of a curled up snake in the back of his head, tongue tasting the air for anything out of place. Ryou pressed his hands to his face and laughed out his pent-up anxiety. He'd done it. He'd _won_.

After a few minutes, he managed to recover from shock, and sat there unmoving, listening to the comforting ticking of his watch and the theme music from the movie. He felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders, something he hadn't even been aware that he'd been carrying, and the relief was so overwhelming that he could do nothing but take in the sights of his familiar living room greedily. Then his stomach growled, so cheerfully Ryou got to his feet to make himself the best dinner he had ever made, because he deserved it. Only he was lacking dessert. The sudden desire to eat something sweet caught him so off-guard that he began to laugh again, a bit more easily than before.

In the back of his mind, Diabound was consuming the residual impressions of Zorc on his mind, and Ryou felt the effects as his headache effectively disappeared and his ears filtered in only music and ticking.

A mild tone of acceptance crept into his thoughts. Maybe it wasn't so bad to have the fiend. Maybe it was okay, to accept this one thing that was a part of his past self. Ryou wasn't as forgiving as Yuugi, but he would try, at least, to care about the creature that had saved his life, and was a part of his soul.

Wandering down a short hallway, Ryou pulled open a closet door with a squeak and pushed aside a box of holiday decorations on the top shelf. He had to stand on his tiptoes, and reach for the back corner blindly, but his fingers caught the edge of a wooden box and he pulled it down. Removing the lid, he looked down with some uneasiness at the occult deck that gave off the aura of his past self. He pulled out the cards carefully, noting with displeasure how the card spirits responded to his touch and even welcomed his presence. Respectfully going through them, past the fiends and powerful spell cards that had nearly destroyed Yuugi many times over, Ryou found and took out the card that represented the snake in his mind.

Diabound was warm in his grip. The rest of the Ring spirit's cards returned to the back of the closet, but this one card found a place in Ryou's deck, wedged in-between magicians and traps like an out-of-place apple in a basket full of oranges. But Ryou thought that the fiend didn't mind. He could feel that it was just as content as he was.

Pulling on his shoes, Ryou wandered out the door to the store feeling more at ease than he'd been since the Ring spirit had left. The things his old possessor had done had still left a heavy mark on his life, but this was the first time that Ryou could remember where he thought that the impact was a good one. He walked out of that door a stronger person with more confidence in himself, and didn't once think back over the past events to let the fear of a creature who no longer existed rule over his life.

The End.


End file.
